National Institutes of Health Approves Maker Mask for Use in All General Communities During COVID-19 Pandemic

SEATTLE, April 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Maker Mask, a nonprofit, rapidly growing grassroots ecosystem and digital platform response to the COVID-19 crisis organized by leaders in technology, industry, and government, today announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), one of the world's foremost medical research centers, approved the Maker Mask design last week for use in all general communities for protection during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Maker Mask design, an open source 3D printable protective mask for use during the COVID-19 crisis, has been approved by the NIH for all general community applications outside of the direct healthcare setting and this approval benefits critical front-line essential service providers including:  Police/Law Enforcement, Fire and Rescue and other Emergency Response service providers. In addition, the NIH states that the Maker Mask is also a great option for essential service resources providing our communities with food and other needed supplies including grocery, delivery, transportation and other supporting services.  For more information, visit  https://3dprint.nih.gov/discover/3dpx-013607

"We are extremely pleased that the NIH has officially approved Maker Mask for use in all general communities including front-line essential services," said Jonathan Roberts, co-founder of nonprofit RPrime which is the sponsor of the Maker Mask Initiative, and founding partner at Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm based in Bellevue, Washington. "All of us rely on our hardworking police and law enforcement organizations, fire and rescue, and other emergency response service organizations to provide vital food, delivery, transportation and other services to our local communities. These workers are on the front lines of this battle against the COVID-19 virus and need protective masks to keep healthy. The Maker Mask team is working around the clock to mobilize small batch production sites across the country and around the world so we can help everyone who is in dire need of masks on a daily basis - no matter what front line they are so heroically defending."

According to Rory Larson, Maker Mask's chief engineer and inventor of the mask, "Our goal when we launched Maker Mask was simple: to get a free, open source high-quality respirator mask design out to the millions of 3D printing enthusiasts across the nation and around the world – even if they own an entry level $200 3D printer – so they could create desperately needed masks using commonly available supplies and materials. That's why I designed the mask as the first over mouth mask of its kind (now approved by the NIH) specifically designed to work for widely available 3D printers that most commonly print using polylactic acid filament, better known as PLA. The NIH approval is great in that we now can get our mask into the hands of more of the first responders and frontline workers who need them."

During the past few days since the makermask.com website was launched on March 30, the number of people joining the Maker Mask Movement has accelerated. People from more than 117 countries have viewed the website resulting in more than 414,000 pageviews. More than 7,500 members from maker/hobbyist communities, healthcare organizations, universities, companies, government agencies, and other groups have signed up to download more than 38,000 computer aided design (CAD) files for printing the masks. These mask designs and specifications files are being provided free of charge by Maker Mask to anyone who wants to build these protective respirator-style masks to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Small batch production sites making Maker Masks are rapidly going into operation across the U.S. and globally. For more information, visit makermask.com.

The Maker Mask digital platform, driven by powerful analytics providing valuable data to an ecosystem of users responding to this crisis, is designed to enable, organize, and coordinate the action of thousands of people at organizations of all types and sizes as well as individual makers working at small batch production sites around the world.

Maker Mask is a rapidly growing grassroots ecosystem response to the COVID-19 crisis. The nonprofit organization is enabling communities to create necessary goods locally and quickly to  lessen the spread of disease, protect more people, reduce burdens on medical facilities, the Department of Defense, and government agencies as well as give people around the world. something they can do to be part of the solution to this pandemic, while building and training capability for the future.  Maker Mask is an RPrime Initiative. The RPrime Foundation is a nonprofit online platform designed to bring together groups of different traditions or beliefs so they may build productive relationships of mutual respect.

SOURCE Maker Mask

Related Links

https://www.makermask.com